Business update proposals.

[punkrules]

Players of Era, the Developers and I are looking into the options of updating Era's player run business system. At the moment the player run system is severely outdated due to the fact that you can just pick garbage off the streets and make more money in 20 minutes than you would make in a day stocking items for a business.

How do you players suggest we buff the Biz's and give players the incentive to work for one?

We can double or triple the prices of all food and ammo, or double the pay as well?

Since players are richer than they have ever been I don't see the issue of raising the prices.

We'd love to hear your ideas

-Katbot (Business Admin)

[Godzilla]

Money was pushed into the economy for the reason to make everything a lot more easily accessable. I think tripling the price of food, ammo and all bomb types really wouldn't do much harm, although it's a bit unfair to the food and bomb businesses.

I feel as if Era has always been anyones game, you could do as you pleased, whether that was PK or work or both.

Recently it has become a requirement to have Ammo and Guns. When before it wasn't. Raising the price for Food Businesses might hurt what was already an issue; Food isn't a requirement. You don't need to buy food and I didn't for 8 years up until this recent time around playing.

Ammo and Guns is. It is the core aspect of the game, It is the foundation, without Guns, without Ammo, Era would be nothing.

So I have to wonder; If you raise the price of certain items too high, will they even be worth purchasing because they aren't a requirement for the game... (Food, Bombs, Grenades, Melees)

What I propose; Raise them slightly maybe double them but make the stocking, the amount of stocks per stock, the time it takes to fully stock the business, a lot easier.

I don't like that it takes 45minutes to an hour of trash picking to completely purchase my store out but it takes over an hour to stock each item to the full stock limit (4 hours total).

[Teacher90]

1.Remove cooldowns on food therefore making it be used more often and removed from the game faster.
2.Raise prices...
3. ???
4. Profit

[Zongui]

i don't think the ammo biz is hurting. they give you more money for your lead/iron than npcs. the food biz seems to be the only business that is hurting. i'm in favor of making them all npc-owned.

[hatebreeed]

godilla is right for the fact pyro tech has been hurting on profit since they removed its guns and left it with only bombs.The price is good right now with the money flow now but the stocking takes forever... and you see stockers just get fustrated because it takes for ever to stock to full and not even 2mins and it could be wiped out and then you have to spend a few more hrs... if you made it so it was only 2 grabs to make a item you can keep up with demand at a fast pace instead of stocking and watching it whipe out as your stocking..also the second part thats anoying is that stockers have no motivation and to get workers is even harder because the pay is so low no one wants to do it they would rather pick trash then work at a buisness. even old era used to be big with buisness now their bearly even active..

[geneticfrog]

the problem with pyro tech is not that its not selling guns, its the only real use for bombs is to sabotage people when they walk outside for their bounties.

no one seems to hunt bounties anymore as they have no need for slow money.

so really this is a symptom of a economy flooded with money/ easily accessible money. making pyro tech sell guns again really just puts a band aid on the real wound in the form of a tumor inside the very core of era.

by tumor i mean trash picking trying to make up for everyone already being rich to try to help noobs and further kick the tumor in high gear.

[Zongui]

yeah no one really buys bombs anymore. do they still sell flak cannon ammo? they sell xm25 ammo too. no one really uses that weapon.

[geneticfrog]

look at all the items and ask yourself why would a person need this?

another example: houses to store items why would youneed that when you can buy a light weight potion for like 500$-2k a week lol! 52 weeks in a year x 2k = 104k for a whole year of light weights i think houses sell for more? not to mention it doesn't expire if you dont play.

also moving the hospital to OSL = less buying of foods.


i support moving spawn after a death to OSL or hospital by choice of player (two spawn buttons) but i dont support moving hospital at OSL for lamers like me saving my money not buying food.

[Godzilla]

Bombs are so profitable with Gangs though. You make $150 a kill and It costs like $40 for a set of bombs that will automatically kill someone for you.

I see PT bought out all the time, I don't think they're having much trouble selling bombs.

The focus I would have is that; Places get bought out in a second when it takes hours and hours of stocking to get little payment reward because the cost of items is so low.

If you keep them low, raise the amount stocked per stock, lower the time to stock/make it easier (Heres a table for 1 set of item, grab it 4 times and it stocks 20 of the item) the reward will be a lot more satisfying because It's so much easier.

Grabbing a table 4 times to earn $20 vs running around looking for all types of trash ? I'd grab the table 4 times.

I agree that prices need to be adjusted a little though. Just making it easier will still be trouble in the long run because you will still be bought out in a second from someone who has trash picked for half an hour.

[Demisis_P2P]

Originally Posted by hatebreeed

godilla is right for the fact pyro tech has been hurting on profit since they removed its guns and left it with only bombs.The price is good right now with the money flow now but the stocking takes forever... and you see stockers just get fustrated because it takes for ever to stock to full and not even 2mins and it could be wiped out and then you have to spend a few more hrs... if you made it so it was only 2 grabs to make a item you can keep up with demand at a fast pace instead of stocking and watching it whipe out as your stocking..also the second part thats anoying is that stockers have no motivation and to get workers is even harder because the pay is so low no one wants to do it they would rather pick trash then work at a buisness. even old era used to be big with buisness now their bearly even active..

Pyrotechs prices are too low. I can buy a p4 and a proximity mine for $33, put them on a door or a bed in a gang base, get a kill and I make $200 from it.
I got a 30 kill streak using only p4s and proximity mines and ended up 4.5k richer from it. At one point I was putting P4s and proximity mines underneath trees randomly all over the GMAP because I was making money from it.
Cheap tricks like that should cost you a little bit of money, not make you money.

Ammo and food prices can only be increased a little bit. Ammo is an essential and food doesn't provide enough utility to cost much more than it does at the moment (considering beds are free and there is passive healing in no PK Zones). Effects of food are pretty balanced in terms of healing amounts and timeouts, so the best course of action for foods is to increase the amount stocked, which will in turn increase the payout for workers, although it will reduce the total amount of actual work available before businesses are fully stocked.

Items like grenades, explosives, specialty ammo, and armor really only have the cost as the only barrier.
As people get more and more money the cost barrier is diminished, and eventually we'll see things like people using flak/flamethrower 24/7 and putting on armor every time they get a chance, which I don't think is in the intended spirit of the game.
For these items I think the cost should simply be increased.

[bradigger]

Originally Posted by Zongui

i don't think the ammo biz is hurting. they give you more money for your lead/iron than npcs. the food biz seems to be the only business that is hurting. i'm in favor of making them all npc-owned.

This sums up my own opinion pretty well. I'm a Manager at PyroTech and an Assistant Manager at Ammo Mart. I have a great deal of fun at both jobs doing stocking and mining. The pay is not as good as trash picking, but I think it's more fun than trash picking. Someone bought all the ammo at Ammo Mart 2-3 times yesterday. I ended up stocking it all myself while watching a bunch of anime. It was pretty nice.

Making the food businesses NPC-owned sounds like a good idea. I think stocking at food places is a real pain compared to the stocking method at other places (where you can just press A repeatedly), and the pay is WORSE for some reason.

tl;dr Please leave PT/AM/GP the way they are, feel free to make food businesses NPC-owned.

[Godzilla]

I think making any more businesses NPC-owned will just completely kill them.

e.g Speedy Pizza; When it was NPC-owned it would have millions of items stocked by staff simply saying +10000000 but no one ever bought food from there because they never really saw it as a business.

e.g Era Hotel; When this was an actual business ran by players, I saw multiple people in there, advertising that you could get rooms etc but now I honestly wouldn't know if the business has made much at all. I personally have never bought a room since it was NPC-Owned and only occasionally bought a room when it was player-ran.

I can't stress enough that making/stocking ALL food just needs to be a lot simpler/easier with a lot more going into the store each "stock".

If you just made it; 4 different locations at every Food Business; you grab the NPC a certain amount of times and it stocks x amount, with a slight increase in price of items; (double) I guarantee to see a lot of success in each food business.

[Kohola_KinG]

Let's buff businesses and make owners richer then they already are. I'll say it again and i said it every time i owned a business. They shouldn't be player-owned.

[bradigger]

Originally Posted by Kohola_KinG

Let's buff businesses and make owners richer then they already are. I'll say it again and i said it every time i owned a business. They shouldn't be player-owned.

Business owners are not rich. This discussion has happened a thousand times. Just stop. I don't know why you're so hard jelly. I'm pretty sure you're fairly rich yourself.

[Kohola_KinG]

Originally Posted by bradigger

Business owners are not rich. This discussion has happened a thousand times. Just stop. I don't know why you're so hard jelly. I'm pretty sure you're fairly rich yourself.

And how do you know they aren't rich? They have a guaranteed income each week and if you buff it, they'll soon have an endless supply of money.

What would i be jealous over? When are you going to start acting your age and realize that i couldn't care less about having everything or nothing. I've owned several businesses. One that i paid $1.8m for and give it away for free the next day, so don't sit here and preach to me that i am jealous over having a business when you know absolutely nothing about me.

Why would you be pretty sure i am fairly rich? Again you're making assumptions you know nothing about. You buff businesses, owners get richer. It's pretty much common sense, no?

Making them NPC owned you can do a lot more with them than you can when they're player owned. Again, common sense.

Start sticking to the subject and stop trying to look for things to insult me with.

Over & out.